This is a quiet film, moving at its own pace, reflecting life with such realism it’s as if we’re invisible guests in Gloria Bell’s life. And yet there’s something thrilling about watching such a great actress hitting all the right notes every step of the way.

This is a great documentary about a great man.

Woody is still capable of writing and directing one of the liveliest, funniest and sharpest movies of the year.

That’s when It Comes at Night is most effective — when we’re trying to figure out these characters and what exactly is creating those weird noises and jolting thumps beyond the locked doors.

Imagine the forges of hell crossed with the extraterrestrial saloon on Tatooine, and you have a notion of Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy II: The Golden Army.

The movie is about imperfect characters in a difficult world, who mostly do the best they can under the circumstances, but not always. Do you realize what a revolutionary approach that is for a movie these days?

Not about murder in the literal sense, although that seems a possibility. It is about a man who would like to kill his father, and who may have been killed spiritually by his father.

Although the narration is addressed to his wife, we learn little about her, his family or his personal life; he is used primarily as a guide through the milestones of the Congo's brief two-month experiment with democracy.

When interesting people have little to say, we watch the body language, listen to the notes in their voices. Rarely does a movie elaborate less and explain more than Tender Mercies.

I kept asking myself what the film was really trying to say about the human condition as reflected by John Merrick, and I kept drawing blanks. The film's philosophy is this shallow: (1)Wow, the Elephant Man sure looked hideous, and (2)gosh, isn't it wonderful how he kept on in spite of everything?

The movie is a record by well-meaning people who try to make a difference for the better, and succeed to a small degree while all around them the horror continues unaffected.

Putty Hill makes no statement. It looks. It looks with as much perception and sympathy as it is possible for a film to look. It is surprisingly effective.

There have been a lot of movies where stars have repeated the triumphs of their parts - but has any star ever done it more triumphantly than Marlon Brando does in "The Freshman"? He is doing a reprise here of his most popular character, Don Vito Corleone of "The Godfather," and he does it with such wit, discipline and seriousness that it's not a ripoff and it's not a cheap shot, it's a brilliant comic masterstroke.

Somewhere inside the utterly unnecessary, bloated running time for John Wick IV, there’s a brilliant, stripped-down, 100-minute classic of a drive-in action film, where the admittedly breathtaking action sequences don’t grind on for so long that they actually become borderline tedious.

As the documentary makes clear, Bourdain, who battled heroin addiction in his younger days, was a thrill-seeker, an obsessive personality, who always seemed to be in search of the next amazing experience, the next high, the next unforgettable adventure.

The affirmation at the end of the film is so joyous that this is one of the few movies in a long time that inspires tears of happiness, and earns them. The Color Purple is the year's best film.

As you’d expect from this cast, the performances are uniformly excellent, with the standout being Jayne Houdyshell, the only holdover from the Broadway production, who reprises her Tony-winning role and is mesmerizing as an ordinary woman with an extraordinary capacity to get through the night, the week, the year, the life, she’s been given.

With spectacularly haunting original songs by Robert Levon Been of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club accompanying the journey, Schrader expertly captures the equal parts exciting and depressing worlds of casinos, where the slots are always jangling and the bar is always open.

Directed by David Tedeschi and produced by a team including Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and Martin Scorsese, “Beatles ’64” could have been subtitled, “Everything Old Is New Again.”

It looks and listens to its characters, curious about the unfolding mysteries of the personality. It is a treasure.

The strength of the thriller genre is that it provides stories with built-in energy and structure. The weakness is that thrillers often seem to follow foreseeable formulas. Frears and his writer, Steve Knight, use the power of the thriller and avoid the weaknesses in giving us, really, two movies for the price of one.

Music was the ANC's most dangerous weapon, and we see footage of streets lined with tens of thousands of marchers, singing and dancing, expressing an unquenchable spirit.

The film is exhilarating to watch because Sandler, liberated from the constraints of formula, reveals unexpected depths as an actor.

This is the kind of movie you'll relate to if you love film itself, rather than its surface aspects such as story and stars. It's not a movie for casual audiences, and it may not reveal all its secrets the first time through, but it announces Wong Kar-Wai, its Hong Kong-based director, as a filmmaker in the tradition of Jean-Luc Godard.

Odd is played by Baard Owe, a trim, fit man with a neat mustache, who may cause you to think a little of James Stewart, Jacques Tati or Jean Rochefort.

It is filled with good-hearted fun, with performances by actors who seem to be smacking their lips and by a certain true innocence that survives all of Reiner's satire.

The movie's schizophrenia keeps it from greatness (this film has no firm idea of what it is about), but doesn't make it bad. It is, in fact, sort of fascinating: a film in the act of becoming, a field trial, an experiment in which a dreamy poet meditates on stark reality.

Trouble in Mind is not a comedy, but it knows that it is funny.

One of the purest and most uncompromising of modern films noir. It captures above all the lonely, exhausted lives of its characters.

Forster's novel is one of the literary landmarks of this century, and now David Lean has made it into one of the greatest screen adaptations I have ever seen.

The most significant fact of the film is that the prosecutor Gunson, a straight-laced Mormon, agrees with the defender Dalton that justice was not served.

The film begins slowly with a murky plot and too many new characters, but builds to a sensational climax.

This is the type of adventure that transports you to a world so exotic and lush and mysterious and dangerous, it feels as if we’re on a different planet.

The movie is entertaining on its own terms, and Washington's warmth at the center of it is like our own bemusement, as together we return to the shadows of noir.

I’m not prepared to instantly label Avengers: Endgame as the best of the 23 Marvel Universe movies to date, but it’s a serious contender for the crown and it’s the undisputed champion when it comes to emotional punch.

Brief, spare and heartbreaking.

The Guard is a pleasure. I can't tell if it's really (bleeping) dumb or really (bleeping) smart, but it's pretty (bleeping) good.

You couldn’t ask for a more unlikely avenger than the ill-equipped sort-of hero of Blue Ruin, and that’s precisely why it’s far, far more suspenseful than the typical violent revenge thriller. It’s also why it functions equally well as a potent reflection on the futility of revenge.

The People’s Joker pushes boundaries and questions the status quo, but it also works as a sincerely told origins story for Joker the Harlequin.

Pavilion is an odd thing: a movie that manages to be immersive without being about much of anything.

If you’re going to go all-in with the gorgeous and chilling and sometimes ludicrous Ex Machina, if you’re going to buy into the lofty debates and the wiggy humor and the borderline misogynistic notion of the perfect woman, you’ll have to check your logic at the ticket counter.

Oldboy is a powerful film not because of what it depicts, but because of the depths of the human heart which it strips bare.

I think the answer is right there in the film, but less visible to American viewers because we are less class-conscious than the filmmakers.

It's better to know going in that you're not expected to be able to fit everything together, that you may lose track of some members of the large cast, that it's like attending a family reunion when it's not your family and your hosts are too drunk to introduce you around.

Jungle Fever contains two sequences - the girl talk and the crackhouse visit - of amazing power. It contains humor and insight and canny psychology, strong performances, and the fearless discussion of things both races would rather not face.

This is a loving, moving, inspiring, quirky documentary that was made while the lives it records were being lived.

I admired this Harry Potter. It opens and closes well, and has wondrous art design and cinematography as always, only more so.

Zootopia is brimming with silly, slapstick humor and terrific one-liners — and yes, some simple yet valuable lessons about tolerance and prejudice and learning to embrace our differences. There’s nothing wrong with a lesson or two when those lessons are packaged within such a great and memorable film.

Wickedly funny.

Movies like Hard Eight remind me of what original, compelling characters the movies can sometimes give us.

Chariots of Fire is one of the best films of recent years, a memory of a time when men still believed you could win a race if only you wanted to badly enough.

This movie is awake. I have seen so many films that were sleepwalking through the debris of old plots and second-hand ideas that it was a constant pleasure to watch House of Games, a movie about con men that succeeds not only in conning the audience, but also in creating a series of characters who seem imprisoned by the need to con, or be conned.

We've seen this done before, but seldom so well, or at such a high pitch of energy.

All of these moments unfold in a film of astonishing maturity and confidence; Eve's Bayou, one of the very best films of the year, is the debut of its writer and director, Kasi Lemmons.

The movie is so accurately acted, especially by Jim Metzler as Mason and Matt Dillon as Tex, that we care more about the characters than about the plot. We can see them learning and growing, and when they have a heart-to-heart talk about going all the way, we hear authentic teenagers speaking, not kids who seem to have been raised at Beverly Hills cocktail parties.

All of these serious questions linger just under the surface of Mississippi Masala, which is, despite its subject, surprisingly funny and cheerful at times, and generates a full-blown romanticism.

Joss Whedon’s take on Shakespeare’s classic tale is swanky, sexy and sophisticated, as bracing as a dry martini poured from a silver shaker on a summer night.

Director Garret Price (“Woodstock 99"), who is clearly a fan of the music, nimbly weaves in current-time interviews with Christopher Cross, Kenny Loggins and various session greats and producers with archival footage.

The movie is slapstick with a deft character touch here and there. It's hard to keep all the characters and plot lines alive at once, but Ruthless People does it, and at the end I felt grateful for its goofiness.

Lacks any formulas or solutions, and is content to show us its complicated characters, their tangled lives, and the way that our need to love and be loved can lead us in opposite directions.

Lost in America is being called a yuppie comedy, but it's really about the much more universal subjects of greed, hedonism and panic. What makes it so funny is how much we can identify with it.

It’s funny as hell in a drive-in splatter movie kind of way, smart and insightful and respectful in its depiction of modern-day teens, brimming with sly and satiric social commentary — and legitimately profound.

Walker finds an unexpected wit and depth in her character. [7 Aug 1992, p.38]

A passionate and explicit film about sexual obsession.

The effect is strange and delightful; somehow the style lends quasi-credibility to a story that is entirely preposterous.

It's one of those films where you feel the authority right away: This movie knows its characters, knows its story, and knows exactly how it wants to tell us about them.

A Hollywood-style romance between beautiful people, and an honest story about recognizable human beings.

He is one of the most prolific and generous of directors, and there is no word that summarizes a "Tavernier film," except, usually, masterful.

The movie gets the feel right, and there's real energy in the concert scenes, especially the tricky debut of Buddy Holly and the Crickets as the first white act in Harlem's famous Apollo Theater.

The kind of film I instinctively respond to. Leave logic at the door. Do not expect subdued taste and restraint, but instead a kind of operatic ecstasy.

This movie is bat-bleep crazy even as it makes solid and thought-provoking arguments. It veers all over the place, at times scoring major laughs, on occasion working quite well as a social satire and a screwball romance. But it also falters with some running jokes that stumble and collapse, and a few cringe-inducing scenes that aim for provocation but seem forced.

Whoever cast De Niro and Grodin must have had a sixth sense for the chemistry they would have; they work together so smoothly, and with such an evident sense of fun, that even their silences are intriguing.

With brilliant, innovative, claustrophobically effective directing choices by Mendes, Oscar-worthy cinematography from the living legend Roger Deakins and strong, raw performances from the two young leads, 1917 is a unique viewing experience you won’t soon shake off.

The movie has an emotional payoff I failed to anticipate. It expresses hope in human nature. It is one of the year's best films.

It is miserable work, even after they grow accustomed to the smell. But it is useful work, and I have been thinking much about the happiness to be found by work that is honest and valuable.

The satire becomes almost numbingly obvious over the far too long running time of 140 minutes, and with all due appreciation for the strong work by the leads, the horrifically impressive VFX and prosthetics, and a few moments of pitch-black humor, we exit the film feeling more pummeled than enlightened.

More reverie and meditation than reportage.

A tender and passionate protest, not without laughter, by Bertrand Tavernier -- a director who is not only gifted but honorable.

Too many films about the dead involve mourning, and too few involve laughter. Yet at lucky funerals there is a desire to remember the good times.

Logan Lucky is great fun and one of the most purely entertaining movies of the year.

It will, I think, entertain kids for whom stop-motion animation is the last thing they're thinking about.

The movie has been both attacked and defended on feminist grounds, but I think it belongs somewhere outside ideology, maybe in the area of contemporary myth and romance.

All well and fine, but it’s a dark thrill to see the return of the fantastically gnarly, nasty, disgusting, humorless and utterly post-human vampire — the O.G. Dracula — in the gothic horror feast that is Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu.”

By the time Missing begins its crucial last half-hour, a strange thing has happened. We care about this dead American, and his wife and father, almost despite the movie. The performances of Spacek and Lemmon carry us along through the movie's undisciplined stylistic displays.

Since it is by Wong Kar Wai, 2046 is visually stunning. He uses three cinematographers but one style, that tries to evoke mood more than meaning. The movie as a whole, unfortunately, never seems sure of itself. It's like a sketchbook. These are images, tones, dialogue and characters that Wong is sure of, and he practices them, but he does not seem very sure why he is making the movie, or where it should end.

This is the kind of movie where you laugh occasionally and have a silly grin most of the rest of the time.

Ron Howard's film of this mission is directed with a single-mindedness and attention to detail that makes it riveting.

The climbing sequences, the storms, the drama of broken equipment and nearly broken men — all great stuff, made even more compelling because the film does a wonderful job of letting us get to know and like each of the three adventurers.

Armando Iannucci (creator of HBO’s “Veep”) transforms Charles Dickens’ masterful but often dour and cumbersome 624-page Victorian novel into a brilliant piece of entertainment that often plays like “Alice in Wonderland” as interpreted by Monty Python.

In Erica Tremblay’s lean and quietly powerful “Fancy Dance,” a 13-year-old girl named Roki can scarcely contain her excitement about an upcoming dance, but the circumstances in this story couldn’t be more different than those old-school high school fairy tales.

There is no mechanical plot that has to grind to a Hollywood conclusion, and no contrived test for the heroes to pass; this is a movie about two particular young men, and how they pass their lives.

Seeps with melancholy, old wounds, repressed anger, lust. That it is also caustically funny and heartwarming is miraculous.

This is one of the year's best films.

In Till, we see how Emmett had music in his heart and a bounce in his step and was just beginning his life’s path when monsters came calling in the middle of the night — and we’re once again filled with admiration for Mamie Till-Mobley, who made sure we never forgot.

The film is told almost entirely without dialogue, but is alive to sound; we spend observant, introspective hours in a Hungarian hamlet where nothing much seems to happen -- oh, except that there's a suspicious death.

Hard-boiled, filled with action, held together by male camaraderie, directed with a lean economy of action. It's one of the most expensive B-pictures ever made, and I think that helps it fit the subject. "A" war movies are about War, but "B" war movies are about soldiers. (Review of Original Release)

Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris is one of the great emotional experiences of our time.

Ten minutes into Lombroso’s film, it’s painfully clear these are people with ugliness in their hearts and dangerously racist ideas. But there’s value in seeing these how these hate hucksters operate and going behind the curtain to see how small they really are.